Can social policy change behavior? A comparative historical examination of parenting leave provisions and gender-equal care

Across Europe, many recent reforms to parenting leave provisions aim to facilitate more gender-equal caregiving of children.

Yet, fathers still take considerably less parental leave than mothers, even in Sweden, which has been a model for gender egalitarian family policy for decades.

Despite considerable historical and cross-national variation, comparative studies of leave policy outcomes are rare, and we know little about whether the same provisions promote similar levels of leave use across institutional contexts.This three-year project pursues three research aims. First, the research assesses gender equality in leave provisions across 31 European countries since 1965.

Second, we examine relationships between leave provisions and gendered leave use.

Finally, the research investigates how exposure to parenting leave rights over time might influence mothers’ and fathers’ leave use.

For these last two aims, multi-level analyses combine individual-level survey data for 31 countries from 2010-2019 with unique country-level data on parenting leave provisions collected by the research team.Results, which will be published open access, will advance theories about the role of social policy in changing gender norms and show how changes in leave provisions and policy outcomes unfold over time.

Additionally, our unique leave provision indicators will be publicly available as a module in the SOFI-SPIN database, contributing to data infrastructure for the benefit of future research.